


Backwords

by saltstreets



Category: The Pacific - Fandom
Genre: M/M, hey it's a sad train fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-28
Updated: 2014-12-28
Packaged: 2018-03-04 02:04:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2905253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltstreets/pseuds/saltstreets
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You'd stopped but you hadn't looked back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Backwords

**Author's Note:**

> This was written in 2011 for tumblr and after a bit of cleaning up I still don't hate it so here we are.

In your head, maybe, you didn't leave.

You stayed on the train, watched the city lights of New Orleans flash by as Sledge slept quietly.

V-J Day had come and gone but you were still fighting private, personal wars, yeah you know, you know.

In your head, on this other path you didn't take  _(were too scared to take, your mind supplies helpfully)_  maybe Eugene wakes up and stretches contentedly in a way he hasn't in a long while. Peleliu and Okinawa had waged wars of their own independent of the Japanese imperial fuckshit on you and him and everyone else and it's a low choking in your gut to see him like this, half-way to comfort now that the shells are but a ringing memory in your ears.

Maybe Eugene wakes up and asks haven't we reached New Orleans yet and you smirk and say I thought I'd hang around, if that's alright with you, Sledgehammah _(You would be terrified but you would smile, damn you, smile)_  and maybe Eugene's face would have lit up and he would say why sure, Snaf, I was hopin' you'd come along, my folks'll be real pleased to meetcha.

And ain't that just fine, now, ain't that just like Eugene Sledge, even though Eugene Sledge could never be friends with this here Snafu, couldn't even be friends with Merriell Shelton, no  _(It was only ever Sledge and Snafu, only ever two Marines in the mud who happened to get along while they killed, that was all it ever was don'tcha know)_ because you are two different animals now, you’re outta the mud and the wet and yeah, the anger that was so crucial essential to survival is out of place here, now, back in the United States of America, God Bless America; God has guided us to victory, not your rage Snafu take your ugly soul and shove it.

You could have wrangled an invitation and you could have dragged yourself into his home, but for what? Here is when the maybe path breaks down because no matter how hard you think and imagine and wish and wish and wish you can't envision a future where Sledge would want you hanging around just a ghost from the war _(Tainting his perfect life and family with something less-than-good, something that even before those damn islands was only ever half-formed)_  and the maybes fall apart and yeah, you had to leave that train, yeah you did and you never could have stayed and ran and ran  _(ran with Sledge, hisses your brain, drilling into your skull from the inside)_  where-the-fuck-ever.

So return to reality- you are alone again and everything is the same as it was before. You had wanted this. When you were on Pavuvu going back to New Orleans and your filthy apartment and your melted-wax friends was a distant flicker, something you couldn’t let yourself hope because you had to live as though you were dead because it was survival _(Now you have your old acquaintances and their questions and they seem paper thin and all you want is the quiet understanding that you left behind)_  you were alone before but now you're just lonely.

You find yourself going back again and again, replaying that scene, that pivotal moment, when you stopped in the aisle  _(You try to tell yourself you were slowing to allow a faceless nameless useless person to step out in front of you but Snafu Shelton don’t wait for no one you stopped to make sure you weren’t leaving anything behind but then you did you did like a magazine you’ve already finished flipping through and you left, left him behind)_  you had stopped but you hadn't looked back.

You had stopped, hesitated, and resolutely not looked back

then you had got off that damn train and started running, done nothing  _but_ looked back since then  _(why couldn't you have forgotten everything; you tried alcohol but only ended up in a shitty motel room with a redhead who spoke a soft-syllabled accent and charged extra for her lips gentle on yours and then you knew it was all going going going, oh man you fucked up now. You fucked up now.)_  so you're stuck here with a slow drowning that maybe you wouldn't have had to endure, maybe it was just your own bad  _(scared)_ choice rather than inexorable fate.

_(In your head, maybe, you didn't leave.)_


End file.
